


all things truly wicked

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Category: Trigun
Genre: Angst, Angstfluff, Brothers, Gen, Manga Spoilers, Twins, Vash talking about Knives how could it not be, kyoudai, manga!child!Knives was a cinnamon roll, minor language nerdery, oldfic, specifically from volumes 6-7, what even do with this information
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4682345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(start from an innocence)</p><p>There was a time, once, when it didn't matter which twin was stronger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all things truly wicked

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on ffdotnet in 2010; it appears here overhauled and updated as an experiment in posting something other than Batman on AO3. ;D

I wasn't really the older brother, and neither was he. Though sometimes to look at us you'd've _sworn_ he was, or other times that it was me.

When he turned his huge eyes on the sleeping future, naming them and wrapping them tight in stories that brought them to life with all his deep belief in human hearts, I'm sure anyone who'd seen the way I smiled at him would have thought I was his big brother. And when he laughed and told me not to worry, that thinking was his job and I'd never have to be afraid of anything, between him and Rem, I know he would have seemed to be mine.

I never thought about it, back then. We'd learned more math and fairy tales than anything about life, enough that the stories Knives made were crazy things that didn't fit together at all, because we barely knew what people were really like. Why shouldn't that woman with the two grey streaks in her hair have eleven children and a flock of pet moths and be President of something? Why _wouldn't_ the little blond boy who looked a little like us be a prince?

And maybe some of the stories were true. Even as crazy as they were. If I ever found out we'd guessed right, way back then, that would be the best. Like having my little brother back for just a second.

I loved Knives. I loved Knives and I _still_ love him, but saying that I know I'm thinking about the little boy I spent the first year of my life with. Before Tessla. Before the Fall. Before he changed. And I don't know whether it still means anything, whether loving my sibling Knives has really anything to do with the madman, the monster, the enemy of humanity that has managed to make me hate him.

Wolfwood was a better older brother to me than Knives, and a better younger one, too. And I've loved _dozens_ of people who didn't give me any reason to have to hate them, over the years. So many good people. Having had the opportunity to do that, even on this awful planet, means an awful lot. Every time a new town opens up in front of me, full of lively faces bitten by wind and sun, a real smile comes through.

And I might hear, ghostly in the back of my mind, _'he's the dentist, you can tell by the way he squints; his children probably sneak their candies so he won't get it into his head to operate on them, and his wife has rules about bringing work home; that woman was crossed in love; this boy is afraid of strangers; they're hiding something and it's tearing the family apart; I bet their father still loves them, but was kidnapped by bandits and will reappear some day with bags of gold...'_ The voice of a little boy.

Memory isn't perfect, so it maybe isn't quite the way he sounded, and it's learned people right along with me, so it can read things in their eyes and hands that my brother and I would never have begun to guess at; hard, cruel things we couldn't recognize, but good ones, too. Ways of being kind that are different from Rem's, that hide under snarls or officiousness or laughing despair, where those boys we were would never have thought of looking. And every so often the whisper says something that sounds like little boys in general sound, and not like Knives at all. For instance, when it gets too into things and brings up space aliens. That kind of thing was always my job. Knives was grounded; Knives was reasonable. Knives was _sweet_. We believed it so easily, when he seemed to have forgotten entirely about the truth, about _Tessla_ , because it seemed just like sensitive Knives to be completely unequal to facing something so mind-numbingly awful.

Well. I guess it was. Just...not the way we thought.

I don't really feel guilty for that any more. All the feelings have gotten worn out and threadbare over the years, except for the rage that flares for Rem's sake, even the layered scars, even the layers and layers of love, even the grief, but occasionally I do remember that I miss him. That younger brother with the wide gentle eyes. That older brother with the warm smile.

I miss him.

I love him.

But that just doesn't mean enough when I hear children crying, and they sound more like the brother I remember than he ever will again.

**Author's Note:**

> In-universe they're supposed to be speaking English anyway, but in Japanese Vash and Knives generally use the infinitely vague 'kyoudai,' which is the only way I'm aware of for siblings to call each other _without_ referencing an age hierarchy, besides their names. People tend to assume Knives is older because he's the more forceful twin, but I liked that Nightow didn't take that easy out and simplify their dynamic.


End file.
